Utility control systems and data processing systems have largely been centralized in nature. Energy Management Systems (EMS's), Distribution Management Systems (DMS's), and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems reside in control or operations centers and rely upon what have generally been low complexity communications to field devices and systems. There are a few distributed control systems for utility applications, including a wireless mesh system for performing fault isolation using peer-to-peer communications among devices on feeder circuits outside of the substations. In addition, certain protection schemes involve substation-to-substation communication and local processing. In general however, centralized systems are the primary control architecture for electric grids.
Moreover, grid control operations have typically been carried out by grid control application functions implemented by a primary grid control device, which is inefficient.